FilmFanatic.org

Synopsis:
In a dystopian British future, an ultra-violent thug (Malcolm McDowell) who has committed a series of heinous crimes with his “droogs” (James Marcus, Michael Tarn, and Warren Clarke) is arrested and sent to prison, where he undergoes a new conversion therapy known as the “Ludovico Technique”. Upon release, Alex (McDowell) feels ill at the thought of violence or sex — but what future lies ahead for this reformed delinquent?

Genres, Themes, Actors, and Directors:

• Character Arc
• Dystopia
• Gangs
• Juvenile Delinquents
• Malcolm McDowell Films
• Mind Control and Hypnosis
• Rape
• Revenge
• Science Fiction
• Stanley Kubrick Films

Response to Peary’s Review:
As Peary writes, Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s dystopian 1962 novel — written after Burgess endured the brutal beating and rape of his wife by AWOL GI’s during a WWII blackout raid — remains a “visually brilliant [yet] thematically reprehensible” film. Peary asserts that “because Alex is meant to embody our savage, anarchic impulses, Kubrick figured we’d identify with him”, and “manipulates us into accepting Alex in relation to the world”. He notes that as “played by McDowell… Alex is energetic, handsome, witty, and more clever, honest, intelligent, and interesting than any of the adults in the cruel world” — and that “without exception, Kubrick makes Alex’s victims more obnoxious than they are in the book [and] their abuse at Alex’s hands more palatable by making them grotesque, mannered, snobbish figures”. Peary points out how many “distancing devices” Kubrick uses, including “extreme wide angles, slow motion, fast motion, surreal backgrounds, [and] songs that counterpoint the violence” — which, by the way, is all “very stylized” when Alex perpetrates it, “but when it comes time for him to endure violence… is much more realistic”. We’re led to pity Alex, who is “like an alley cat declawed before being returned to the streets”.

Peary’s no-holds-barred reviews of A Clockwork Orange in GFTFF (and his Cult Movies 2 book) are incisive, compelling, and worth quoting at greater length. He notes that Burgess stated, “If we are going to love mankind, we will have to love Alex as a not unrepresentative member of it; it is preferable to have a world of violence undertaken in full awareness — violence chosen as an act of will — than a world conditioned to be good or harmless.” However, Peary points out that “the mankind Kubrick shows us is totally alien to us and not worthy of our love. And even before he undergoes the Ludovico treatment, Alex’s violent acts don’t seem to be made through free choice, but are reflexive, conditioned by past violence — he is already a clockwork orange (human on the outside, mechanized on the inside).” Ultimately, the “film’s strong, gratuitous violence is objectionable (as is the comical atmosphere when violence is being perpetrated), but the major reason the film can be termed fascistic is Kubrick’s heartless, super-intellectual, super-orderly, anti-septic, anti-human, anti-female, anti-sensual, anti-passion, anti-erotic treatment of its subject”, with “all emotional stimuli… lumped together as being harmful”, and “all art… pornographic”.

In Cult Movies 2, Peary adds that “the film is like a Sunday sermon where the fellow up on the pulpit suddenly realizes there is no moral lesson that applies to his listeners… Kubrick [simply] teaches paranoid individuals… that you can’t cure the habitual thrill criminal”. He concludes his essay in this book by noting that “once Alex is arrested and the look of the film shifts away from dreamlike pop art, the picture becomes excruciatingly dull”. I’m essentially in agreement with Peary: I’ve avoided a re-watch of A Clockwork Orange for years, and don’t plan to revisit it again — but it’s infamous (and beloved) enough to warrant one-time viewing by film fanatics. (Meanwhile, the cinematography and sets are indeed memorable, as is Wendy Carlos’s synthesized score.) Be forewarned that some scenes are almost unbearably misogynistic and/or brutalizing; if our world is actually headed in this direction, we have reason to be very scared indeed.

Redeeming Qualities and Moments:

• Malcolm McDowell as Alex
  
• John Alcott’s cinematography
  
• Many hideously memorable sequences
  
  
• Effectively stylized, futuristic sets and visual design
  
  
• Wendy Carlos’s memorable synthesized score

Must See?
Yes, once, as a dark cult classic.

Categories

• Cult Movie
• Important Director

(Listed in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die)

Links:

• IMDb entry
• FilmSite Review
• NY Times Original Review
• Moria Review
• DVD Savant Review
• Spinning Image Review

Synopsis:
A radio producer (Patricia Neal) discovers a charismatic drifter (Andy Griffith) in Arkansas who is soon tapped to star in his own television show as “Lonesome Rhodes”, and becomes a folksy cult favorite with “the common people”. Griffith and Neal fall in love, but their romance is compromised when Griffith marries an adoring young baton-twirler (Lee Remick). Meanwhile, Griffith’s estranged wife (Kay Medford) shows up to wreak havoc, and Griffith’s growing need for adoration turns him into a monstrous narcissist.

Genres, Themes, Actors, and Directors:

• Andy Griffith Films
• Elia Kazan Films
• Folk Heroes
• Journalists
• Lee Remick Films
• Media Spectacle
• Naïve Public
• Patricia Neal Films
• Political Corruption
• Television
• Walter Matthau Films

Response to Peary’s Review:
There could hardly be a more apt time in American history to post a review of this “cynical film” about a “Frankenstein Monster [who] use[s] the media to bolster his fame, manipulate the public, and increase his power”.

Director Elia Kazan and screenwriter Bud Schulberg had no way of knowing that a bombastic reality-T.V. star would rise to the highest power of the land in 2016 — but their telescoping of current-day America is simply uncanny, and demonstrates that human tendencies haven’t evolved much (if at all) since this film’s release. Peary writes that “Schulberg is expressing his fear that television, which has tremendous power, will become a political tool” — as, of course, it has (along with the internet). He notes that while “Lonesome Rhodes is guilty of taking advantage of the medium — through which you can fool all the people all of the time”, “Schulberg is attacking us, the ignorant people who sits like sheep and believes whatever it sees on the tube”. Perhaps most creepily prescient is Peary’s comment that these days, if “Rhodes were caught expressing his real thoughts while thinking the mike was off, his popularity would probably go up”. ‘Tis true, indeed. He closes his review by noting that this is a “well-made film” and that “in her debut, Lee Remick catches your eye as a sexy baton twirler”:

— but I find it more relevant to comment on Kazan’s memorable direction and Gayne Rescher and Harry Stradling’s consistently stark b&w cinematography.

In his Alternate Oscars, Peary names Griffith Best Actor of the year for his role here, noting that his “Lonesome Rhodes is quite a shock, a perversion of the other two characters” he was known for at the time: a “harmless country boy” in No Time for Sergeants on Broadway, and his “easygoing sheriff in the long-running Andy Griffith Show.” He writes that “Lonesome is abrasive, ambitious, shrewd, and manipulative” — someone who “with unbridled energy and the right mix of superiority and humility, attempts to convince everyone around him that he is right”. He further notes that “when Lonesome expounds his conservative philosophy to redneck sycophants” he’s “creepy”, and that “when Lonesome has made a fool of himself on national television and no one shows up for his lavish dinner and he hugs the servants in an effort to get them to say they love him” he “is pathetic”.

Lonesome’s ultimate lesson (appropriately enough) is that “it really is lonely at the top”. Peary asserts it’s a good thing that Griffith never again played such a “monster” on-screen, given that no one “could stand to see or hear another Lonesome Rhodes” — but then again, life itself offers plenty such monsters to loathe…

Redeeming Qualities and Moments:

• Andy Griffith as “Lonesome Rhodes”
  
• Patricia Neal as Marcia Jeffries (nominated by Peary as one of the Best Actresses of the Year in Alternate Oscars)
  
• Fine cinematography
  
  
  
• Incisive direction by Kazan
  
  
  
  
• Budd Schulberg’s searing screenplay
  
  

Must See?
Yes, as a heartbreakingly relevant classic. Nominated as one of the Best Pictures of the Year in Peary’s Alternate Oscars.

Categories

• Genuine Classic
• Noteworthy Performance(s)

Links:

• IMDb entry
• TCM Article
• NY Times Original Review
• Time Out Capsule Review